Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Licensure Portability Grant Awarded

The Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) has received a Licensure Portability Grant for $349,785.00 for each year for three years awarded by HRSA a division within HHS.

The primary purpose of the grant is to provide support so that the State professional licensing boards will be able to carry out programs to reduce statutory and regulatory barriers to telemedicine. The awarded grant funds will be used to continue the development and implementation of the ASPPB Psychology Licensure Universal System (PLUS).

Plus developed by ASPPB is an on-line application system and can be used by any applicant who is seeking licensure, certification, or registration in any state, province, or territory in the U.S. or Canada that participates in the PLUS program. PLUS also enables concurrent application for the ASPPB Certificate of Professional Qualification (CPQ) and the ASPPB inter-jurisdictional Practice Certificate.

All information collected as part of the application is deposited and saved in the Credentials Bank which is a Credentials Verification & Storage Program referred to as “The Bank” where it can be accessed by the psychologist at a later date or forwarded to any other licensing board, organization, entity, or individual upon request at any time.

With the HRSA grant, ASPPB will be able to expand the number of ASPPB member jurisdictions using the PLUS online application including storage of licensure related credentials for electronic transmission and later to develop a specific program or mechanism to address the current cross jurisdictional barriers to telepsychology.